CHP to announce more candidates for local elections next week

THE MAIN opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) is getting ready to announce 300 more mayoral candidates on Dec. 6 for the March 2019 local elections.

Although the party’s alliance negotiations are ongoing with the other opposition parties, it has already announced 105 candidates on Oct. 24 and 147 candidates on Nov. 14 for some of the districts and towns and 10 provincial municipalities.

Meanwhile, the CHP’s candidates for metropolitan cities have yet to be determined as talks to nominate joint candidates in certain provinces continue.

All candidates for the CHP for the local elections are expected to be announced by the end of December.

The party has been signaling that it will continue the Nation Alliance with the rightwing Good Party (İP), conservative Felicity Party (SP) and center-right Democrat Party (DP), which was formed for the June 24 parliamentary elections, in order to appeal to the other parties’ voter bases in the elections.

Mansur Yavaş, the former mayor of Beypazarı district in Ankara, is pointed to as a likely joint candidate of the possible CHPled alliance.

Along with him, the former president of the Ankaragücü football club, Cengiz Topel Yıldırım, has also come to the fore as an alternative.

The candidacy race is also heating up in Istanbul where the opposition has tried to break the decades-old rule of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party).

Muharrem İnce, the presidential candidate of the party in previous elections, has voiced his intentions to run for mayor of Istanbul with the condition that he is nominated through an intraparty survey.

İnce is reportedly insisting on the survey to avoid ending up like Mustafa Sarıgül, the CHP’s Istanbul mayoral candidate in the 2014 local elections. He was nominated by the party leadership without primary elections and lost with a 10 percent difference, due to the lack of support from the party’s organization, according to a post-election analysis.

Yet, CHP Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu is reportedly hesitant to nominate İnce, fearing that if İnce wins in Istanbul, he may re-run for the party chairmanship position and dethrone him.

Apart from İnce, the party’s General Secretary Akif Hamzaçebi and Gürsel Tekin, the former Istanbul provincial head of CHP, previously announced their intent to run for the mayoral post in Istanbul.